hat he
was scheming to leave the city open to the Confederates, to "uncover"
it, as the soldiers said. By way of focussing the matter on a definite
issue, his enemies demanded that he detach from his army and assign
to the defense of Washington, a division which was supposed to be
peculiarly efficient General Blenker had recruited a sort of "foreign
legion," in which were many daring adventurers who had seen service in
European armies. Blenker's was the division demanded. So determined was
the pressure that Lincoln yielded. However, his brief anger had blown
itself out. To continue vengeful any length of time was for Lincoln
impossible. He was again the normal Lincoln, passionless, tender,
fearful of doing an injustice, weighed down by the sense of
responsibility. He broke the news about Blenker in a personal note to
McClellan that was almost apologetic. "I write this to assure you that I
did so with great pain, understanding that you would wish it otherwise.
If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident you
would justify it."(19) In conversation, he assured McClellan that no
other portion of his army should be taken from him.(20)

The change in Lincoln's mood exasperated Stanton. He called on his pals
in the Committee for another of those secret confabulations in which
both he and they delighted. Speaking with scorn of Lincoln's return to
magnanimity, he told them that the President had "gone back to his first
love," the traitor McClellan. Probably all those men who wagged their
chins in that conference really believed that McClellan was aiming to
betray them. One indeed, Julian, long afterward had the largeness of
mind to confess his fault and recant. The rest died in their absurd
delusion, maniacs of suspicion to the very end. At the time all of them
laid their heads together--for what purpose? Was it to catch McClellan
in a trap?

Meanwhile, in obedience to Lincoln's orders of March thirteenth,
McClellan drew up a plan for the defense of Washington. As Hitchcock was
now in such high feather, McClellan sent his plan to the new favorite of
the War Office, for criticism. Hitchcock refused to criticize, and
when McClellan's chief of staff pressed for "his opinion, as an old and
experienced officer," Hitchcock replied that McClellan had had ample
opportunity to know what was needed, and persisted in his refusal.(21)
McClellan asked no further advice and made his arrangements to suit
himself. On April